Psychodynamic Practice Individuals, Groups and Organisations ISSN: 1475-3634 (Print) 1475-3626 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpco20 Oedipus at work: A family affair? Paula Nicolson To cite this article: Paula Nicolson (2012) Oedipus at work: A family affair?, Psychodynamic Practice, 18:4, 427-440, DOI: 10.1080/14753634.2012.719738 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2012.719738 Published online: 11 Sep 2012. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 516 View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpco20 Psychodynamic Practice Vol. 18, No. 4, November 2012, 427–440 Oedipus at work: A family affair? Paula Nicolsona,b,c* a Health Professions Council, London, UK; bBritish Psychological Society, Leicester, UK; cAcademy of Social Sciences, London, UK (Received 31 December 2010; final version received 12 March 2012) The ‘family’, and the Oedipus complex in particular, is alive and kicking, not only as a means and/or metaphor for explaining family relationships and dynamics, but also as a diagnostic lens for consulting beyond the family, to individuals, groups and organisations and as a means of considering defences against anxiety and gender relations. This paper examines the emotional ‘fallout’ within two organisational case studies: (a) a group relations exercise for planning an event by clinical psychology trainees and (b) consulting to a group of social work managers whose responsibility is to protect vulnerable children. The paper juxtaposes observations from these case studies with classical Freudian analysis of group behaviours and Kleinian/post-Kleinian perspectives on defending against anxiety in organisations. It suggests a reiteration of the power of both Freudian and Kleinian perspectives on the primal scene as a problem-solving focus for organisational consultancy. Keywords: Oedipus complex; organisation; family; anxiety; groups Introduction: the Oedipus complex The central significance of the Oedipus complex, the primal scene at the heart of ‘family’ life, may be one of the more difficult ideas to grasp in everyday thinking, perhaps because its repression occurs at a deep level (Loewald, 2000). My intention in this paper is to outline how recognition of an Oedipal ‘mindset’ (Dartington, 1996; Stein, 2007) can shed valuable light onto organisational dynamics. Gender and the Oedipus complex Ever since Freud discovered the Oedipus complex it has been recognised as the central conflict in the human psyche – the central cluster of conflicting *Email: paula.nicolson@rhul.ac.uk ISSN 1475-3634 print/ISSN 1475-3626 online Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2012.719738 http://www.tandfonline.com 428 P. Nicolson impulses, phantasies, anxieties and defences. It has therefore become the centre of psychoanalytic work (Segal, 2007, p. 1). Freud’s account of the Oedipus complex, the ‘classical’ view, revolves around the phallic stage of development (around the years three to five) when the boy has phantasies of genital desire towards his mother (Freud, 1913/2007). Through fearing his father’s wrath and reprisals, and thus castration, the boy identifies with his father by taking in the patriarchal/ parental authority (the phallus) to be his own internal monitor, represented in the development of the super-ego (Freud, 1918[1914]). The girl during the phallic stage comes to realise her own and her mother’s ‘lack’ leading her to sever some of the close and exclusive attachment she has felt hitherto with the mother (Freud, 1924/2007). Kleinian approaches to the Oedipus complex differ from the classical Freudian. For Klein, the mother was the first and most important ‘other’/ ‘object’ in the infant’s physical and mental life. She (Klein, 1928/1998) considered the Oedipus complex as starting in the first year of life, connected to the baby’s relationship to the breast. For Segal, the Kleinian version is as follows: It is the frustration at the breast, and crucially the weaning, that makes the infant turn to the father’s penis and become aware of the triangular situation (Segal, 2007, p. 2). Working through the Oedipus complex happens through a series of rivalries and relinquishments – with the child being able to give up the desire to annihilate one parent as the rival for total possession of the other one (Laufer, 2007) and perhaps with the boy leaving the mother’s protection to make something of himself in the world independently, maybe to rediscover her favour (Schwartz, 2010). A girl on the other hand (Chodorow, 1978) has a continuing significant relationship with her mother. The classical position, that while boys react to their fear of castration girls experience penis envy, is played out by the girl seeing her mother as a sexual rival for her father. Consequently, she feels hostility towards her mother. Chodorow argues that the Oedipus complex should not be seen as symmetrical for boys and girls. Girls may idealise a father who is not there enough and there is evidence from social psychology research that fathers more than mothers may ‘gender type’ their children, encouraging boys to be like them and girls to be more seductive (pp. 118–119). The triangular situation Freud saw this situation as ‘complicated’ and that the ‘. . . intricacy of the problem is due to two factors: the triangular character of the Oedipus situation and the constitutional bisexuality of each individual’ (Freud, 1923/2007). The heart of the Oedipal configuration therefore is about Psychodynamic Practice 429 difference and experiencing the ‘triangular situation’, so that conflicts about seduction, betrayal and defending against anxiety become preoccupations. The baby/child feels constantly at risk of being ‘left out’ because of the close parental couple and fears that a sibling might be favoured. Mitchell (2008), considering the implications of rivalry, hatred and envy, evocatively refers to ‘hidden’ siblings as rivals, suggesting that the presence of a sibling evokes the danger of the other’s annihilation at least in part because a . . . toddler appears partly to believe that the baby about to be born is another version of itself (p. 29) and a potential replacement. This dynamic, although simple and familiar to social and developmental psychologists (Dunn, 1988)1 as well as psychoanalysts, has a deeper meaning when played out consciously and unconsciously among adults (Klein, 1959/1975). Despite Segal’s assertion, above, that the Oedipus complex is the centre of psychoanalytic work, the significance of the Oedipus conflict has waned in psychoanalytic circles (Loewald, 2000). In Loewald’s view, this is firstly because the Oedipus complex occurs repeatedly, in various forms, throughout life, requiring repression of destructive instincts in order to manage psychically. Thus that ‘mastery’, first established during the latency (post-phallic) stage, occurs at different levels at different times of life, leaving repression or ‘destruction’ of the associated feelings, to operate a form of ‘waning’ (p. 239). Secondly, the decline of psychoanalytic interest in the Oedipal phase and Oedipal conflicts has occurred because of a shift towards pre-Oedipal development focusing on the mother–infant dyad and issues of separation-individuation and the self and narcissism (p. 240). Defending against anxiety in organisational life Elliott Jaques (1953) proposed a ‘strikingly close correspondence’ (p. 420) between defences against early depressive and paranoid anxieties as described by Melanie Klein (1928/1998, 1959/1975) and the way individuals use organisational processes to defend against anxiety ‘naturally’ occurring in organisational life. The dynamics of groups and organisations replay the dynamics of early life, thereby bringing primitive anxieties to the surface. This brings about social defences similar to the individual’s unconscious defence mechanisms. This work was developed further in the now classic study of a nursing service (Menzies, 1984) in which Isabel Menzies-Lyth considered the work of providing care for sick people, which was consciously and objectively stressful and therefore likely to provoke anxiety. She suggested that the intensity and complexity of the anxieties re-activated primitive unconscious phantasies that the nurses then projected into their current work situation. In order for the nurses to function, social defence mechanisms became embedded in informal and formal rules that depersonalised the care offered 430 P. Nicolson to patients and the way nurses treated each other. Similar processes have been described in a number of subsequent studies of hospitals (Lokman, Gabriel, & Nicolson, 2011) and other organisations whose primary tasks stimulate conscious and unconscious anxieties (Miller & Gwynne, 1972; Obholzer, 1996; Schwartz, 1994; Sievers, 1999). Oedipus in the organisation The Oedipus complex, the . . . psychic representation of a central, instinctually motivated, triangular constellation of child-parent relations (Loewald, 2000), links with the metaphor of the ‘organisation as family’ (Brotheridge & Lee, 2006; Shapiro & Carr, 1991) and the application of family therapy concepts to working as an organisational consultant (Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1980). In applying the Oedipus complex to organisational consulting then, it is important to hold in mind Loewald’s description that there is an instinctual motivation in the triangular constellation and that in an organisation, as in the family, all the participants are engaged in finding a place that they find tolerable within the system. Leadership in formal organisations has been studied extensively (Nicolson et al., 2011) but Freud’s insights about the role of emotional relationships between leaders and individual members still out-shines some more recent empirical contributions (Freud, 1922/1955). Particularly relevant is his understanding of ‘dread’ as the outcome of threats to or cessation of emotional ties between the leader and followers and between the followers themselves. Loss of feeling (and thus loss of the leader him/ herself) in this way brings about panic and disintegration of the organisation. These ideas suggest that the Oedipal ties (albeit painful ones) are important to maintain some degree of structure, so members might find and hold a place in organisational life, as indeed they must in the family if it is to survive. As Segal (2007), describing Klein’s Oedipal theory, suggests, Oedipal phantasies give rise to fear of primitive persecutory maternal and paternal figures (or a combined one). This combined figure is partly a denial of the parental intercourse and also a projection of the child’s hostility to that intercourse. This makes the combined parental figure particularly frightening. Such a figure might be represented by the senior management team in an organisation, particularly one that appears (and might actually be) relatively united in purpose. When this is the case, efforts are made by junior members of the organisation to tear them apart either in reality or phantasy. The UK Coalition Government’s policy to increase university tuition fees, despite the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s pre-election pledge to scrap them, unleashed hatred and fear of the partnership between Clegg (Liberal Democrat) and David Cameron (Conservative). This was Psychodynamic Practice 431 observable in attempts to undermine them as a couple by both LibDem and Conservative MPs and Ministers, who justified their actions with accusations of betrayal. Images of Cameron and Clegg have shown them ‘together’, ‘united’ and the name ‘Cleggeron’ has been bandied around the mass media. The male, ‘bisexual’ combination had proved to be particularly frightening because it seemed to put itself and its relationship first and beyond reach of what might be good for those under their ‘care’. Unsuccessful paternal authority figures are sometimes perceived as attempting to undermine and corrupt systems (Long, 2008; Stein, 2007). The case material I draw upon below highlights the ways in which instinctual unconscious anxiety, competition, envy, narcissism and hatred are present in many organisations so that those involved as both participants and consultants are sometimes taken unawares by those dynamics. Case study One: Incestuous siblings and the impotent ‘mother’2 The task involved a temporary organisation, set up for seven weekly sessions for final year trainee clinical psychologists along with their core academic staff, to design and run a mini-group relations event for first year trainees. The group engaged in this project comprised 8 men and 10 women whose ages ranged from their mid-30s to early 60s, with the majority being in their mid to late 40s.3 Thus, this group could literally, as well as metaphorically, constitute a family with parents, aunts, uncles and sibling children. Sarah-Jane (one of the trainees) volunteered to be the ‘leader’, and manage the event-planning during the first session. This offer, eagerly accepted by the other 17 members, should perhaps have been read as an early signal of impending danger to both Sarah-Jane and the temporary organisation, as members had given up their authority without exploration of legitimate authority, without love for the new leader (Freud, 1922/1955) and without consideration of the relationship of the role to the task itself [which had not been decided upon at that point] (Sievers & Beumer, 2006). It was then agreed that Sarah-Jane would circulate (her version of) the results of interim e-discussions to those who wanted them. John (one of the youngest trainees) subsequently distributed a detailed table with a plan/ structure of the proposed event. It thus appeared that John was part of an ‘inner-circle’ privileged to share the secrets of the ‘senior’ members of the family/organisation. It even seemed at the time that the group was moving to a basic assumption (BaP) ‘pairing group’, with both John and Sarah-Jane pushing the group towards ‘doing’ (Bion, 1961) and achieving Sarah-Jane’s expressed desire for ‘concrete’ plans. But this couple may have only existed in the group’s (or even just my own) phantasy. By the end of the second meeting, John (or at least his ideas) had disappeared (without obvious trace). It was as if he had been annihilated. 432 P. Nicolson Different plans were now on the table. As the remaining meetings progressed, John became quieter but paradoxically more visible, apparently ‘watching’ chaotic struggles for power and influence over the group. I myself4 could ‘hear’ him (noiselessly) saying, I told you so – you cannot organise yourselves. At the session prior to the event itself, when roles for the event-day were being allocated, John stated that he did not want any role on the day. This led to an aggressive exchange when one of SarahJane’s management team5 did suggest a role for him. What had happened to make John unable to fight for some leadership role following his early bid? Had he turned from his ‘mother’, having experienced her potential impotence? His failed attempt to ‘combine’ emotionally with his mother during the first two sessions had evidently opened a space around Sarah-Jane, enabling rivals to take up that place instead. Perhaps she had become the bad breast failing to acknowledge and nourish him when he had made his advances to her with his initial proposal for a plan. At this point, I offer a tentative hypothesis that John had sought to ‘penetrate’ his ‘mother’s’ consciousness with his ideas and his being but was rebuffed. He therefore tried to ‘murder’ Sarah-Jane’s parental authority by not playing the part offered to him by one of her proxies (Loewald, 2000). This may have increased the anxiety felt by the group/organisation and paradoxically led them to support Sarah-Jane in her role, thus increasing anxiety further. John did not succeed immediately (or even at all) in his murderous intent, in that Sarah-Jane managed the group until the event itself. However, she did not reach her final goal unscathed and several relationships developed which consciously or unconsciously attempted to undermine her in various aggressive ways. However, she remained ‘alive’ as the group consciously and unconsciously combined in ensuring that all responsibility for success or failure became hers. One example of an attempt to undermine Sarah-Jane was through Ginny, one of the younger participants, who became closer to John as the weeks progressed. Her normally quiet voice became louder during each successive planning meeting, and although she overtly expressed anger, I cannot recall the detail of anything she said. There seemed to be something unspeakable and intolerable for Ginny that she both did and did not want others to ‘hear’. Perhaps she was holding the guilt, envy, disturbance and fear for everyone else. Perhaps there was an unconscious BaP (pairing) (Bion, 1961) so thinking could be avoided (which would otherwise require taking up authority) and the group could then ‘mindlessly’ remove the leader. Perhaps she combined with John (her sibling) to form a new, incestuous parental couple (Freud, 1913/2007). Perhaps there were still emotional ties between group members and the leader, strong enough to prevent total panic and disintegration as long as John (and perhaps Ginny Psychodynamic Practice 433 too) projected their feelings of murderous intention which were introjected by the group. Mitchell (2008) suggests that psychoanalysis emphasises the vertical (child/parent) relationship overlooking the power and importance of the ‘lateral axis’, i.e. between siblings, which she also considers in the context of group behaviour. Mitchell argues that sibling relationships relate more to explanations of femininity than masculinity6 and thus prioritise fears of annihilation, associated with girls (which shares an equivalence to the male fear of castration). The girls’ fears involve the loss of love (or being loved), an excessive narcissism which needs to be confirmed by being the object, not subject, of love (p. 4). Perhaps this fear of losing the status as the love object and the accompanying phantasy of annihilation goes some way towards a hypothesis about some of Sarah-Jane’s behaviour. Perhaps John, as a man, represented the possibility of Sarah-Jane’s annihilation as he might have taken her place as the object of desire: the leader, manager and ‘chosen’ one (Mitchell, 2008). However, it remains necessary to hold Freud’s idea of libidinous ties between ‘siblings’ (group members, maybe John and Ginny) in mind when trying to make sense of these behaviours (Freud, 1922/ 1955). Perhaps Sarah-Jane had striven to cast opposition aside, out of the anxiety that any (perceived) dissent would destroy her. This brought to mind the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. Decisions are made by the adults who fear being replaced by the up-and-coming younger generation (Lister, 2001). Thinking about the primal scene in this context did not come to mind initially because one lone female had been taking the lead. However, when thinking about the attempt by John to become close to her and his subsequent relationship with his other sibling, Ginny, Oedipal relationships potentially illuminated gender/power struggles beyond and more deeply than some conscious explanations of gender roles in leadership and management (Nicolson, 1996). Lister (2001) has suggested that a psychoanalytic reading of behaviour in organisations alongside more traditional management and social science perspectives can add key insights to processes that are destructive to organisational life, such as envy in unresolved sibling relationships. Lister was particularly concerned to show the relevance of the Oedipus complex in making sense of the ‘intergenerational’ elements of family life, which might have been played out by John/Ginny versus Sarah-Jane. There is the suggestion that Ginny and Sarah-Jane, the two women involved, were motivated by the fear of annihilation. Sarah-Jane moved forward to the task regardless of what the others all ‘saw’ – in other words, John’s and Ginny’s marginalisation. For Sarah-Jane, perhaps the lack of security from a father (or mother) figure forced her into highly anxious, task-oriented competition in the fear that she might somehow be left out or behind her siblings. For 434 P. Nicolson Ginny, the mother had failed to be conscious of her existence. Ginny, it seems, had been annihilated by Sarah-Jane, the mother, because of SarahJane’s need to retain the phallus (of leadership) and thus protect herself against her own fears of annihilation. Case study Two: Child protection? The consultancy comprised a reflective group of 10 newly promoted or appointed team leaders and practice managers in a local authority Children’s Services social work agency (Bamfordbridge) over 10 consecutive weeks. The primary task of that organisation is to ensure the safety of children in the community, support vulnerable families and other carers as well as overseeing fostering and adoption. The focus of my consultation was to provide containment for the social work managers and, by proxy, to offer containment too to the dysfunctional families they worked with, while also holding in mind the ‘dark side’ of child protection services (Sievers, 1999), such as turning a blind eye to some dangerous practices among both colleagues and parents (Lenthall, 1998; Sievers, 1999; Steiner, 1985). The Oedipal dynamics and phantasies, present in organisations, are particularly vivid where parents and children are the centrepiece of the work; the deprivation and abuse suffered by the children can impact upon the professionals, with the social defences against anxieties interfering with their capacity to think, which in turn can further compound the children’s deprivation (Emanuel, 2002). Cherry and the ‘King’ Since he was the manger of the organisation, and a man described to me as ‘hard to reach’, I did not expect to have much to do with Daniel (the primary client) on a practical, face-to-face level. Like many fathers (or kings), he was mostly unavailable, physically and emotionally, because of work commitments. However, his importance resounded, consciously and in phantasies, for the group and myself far more than I imagined or realised at the time because I had lost sight of the ways in which emotional ties bind people to leaders (Freud, 1922/1955). Daniel was brought to my attention in many ways but here I want to explore his role in relation to Cherry. Cherry, one of the newly appointed practice managers who had worked as a social worker for several years in the organisation, wanted me to know that she was a favourite in the organisation and talked of her really good manager/mother (unlike those whom the others in the group worked with) as well as her relationship (over the years) with Sally (Daniel’s deputy). She mentioned Daniel frequently too. Psychodynamic Practice 435 During the first three meetings, her talk of her difference/separateness from the others increased. She did not really know why she was here in the group because their issues were different from hers and in fact she was not worried about anything now she was working with a ‘good’ manager. The others worked hard to maintain her being there. Possibly, they were curious about what went on for her when they were not all together. I listened carefully to what she was saying and she seemed to me to share many experiences with the others (good and bad). So why did she need to separate herself from her siblings? Mothers and fathers have a relationship that excludes the infant/child and that exclusion gives rise to envy and the desire to destroy, coming from a hatred of being ‘the other’. Daniel was the primary client and we had negotiated the consultation together. He had brought me into his ‘family’ world. Perhaps the family had been ‘doing alright’ without me. Why did they need this (surplus) mother? What was my phantasy relationship with Daniel? I may have seemed to be brought into their world from a secret place that only Daniel and I knew of. The group members were perhaps concerned to prevent the phantasy of the joined parental couple having the potency to terrify them. Being excluded from a parental or important management relationship can give rise to attempts to seduce the parental figure by the excluded infant/ child/staff member. This could be experienced, unconsciously and consciously, as a means of gaining access to and acceptance by the parental couple or management group. In this case, as I might have been Cherry’s phantasy ‘(step)mother’, she could have wanted to test whether I had the power to evoke Daniel’s potency and to put her back in her place – or to see whether I would be put back in mine. Cherry also (I thought) might have the power to attempt to destroy me through an envious attack on both me and the group (her siblings), thus leading to the group’s disintegration which would enable her, in phantasy, to keep Daniel to herself (Freud, 1922/1955). How far might this reflect the lives of some of the families this organisation worked with? Seduction theory as presented by Freud is highly complex and related to infantile sexual drives but does usefully apply to an organisational consultancy such as this (Freud, 1905[1901]; Nicolson, 2012). It relates to the time that the girl turns from her mother, who cares for her physical needs, towards her father, phantasising that he has seduced her. This ‘heterosexual turn’ is based upon a frustration and disappointment with the mother (Young-Bruehl, 2002), while for Klein the future adaptation to reality for the infant/child is the degree to which they are able to tolerate the deprivations emerging from the Oedipal situation (Klein, 1928/1998). Cherry phantasised her specialness to Daniel; perhaps as Sally’s (apparent) favourite she had linked Daniel and Sally as a parental couple. I had arrived as both separate from that parental couple but also perhaps as 436 P. Nicolson a secret mother or even as part of a new parental couple that she felt excluded from and she could not tolerate being deprived of her seemingly privileged position. Such a family configuration might be familiar in the troubled families with whom this group worked. Britton (2007) suggests that resolution of the Oedipus complex and the depressive position are intrinsically linked. The initial recognition of the parental sexual relationship involves relinquishing the idea of sole and permanent possession of the mother and this loss leads to envy. Resolution for the child means relinquishing her claim on the parents, thereby accepting their sexual relationship. However, if the resolution begins to take place before a secure maternal object is established then Britton proposes that an illusional oedipal configuration is formed as a defensive organisation in order to deny the psychic reality of the parental relationship (Britton, 2007, p. 85). This may offer some explanation of Cherry’s behaviour, as she did not appear to want to give the mother/consultant a chance to establish a secure relationship with her or her colleagues/siblings. Discussion The power of the primal scene, mirroring the dynamics around the Oedipus complex, can be used as an explanatory framework for gender relations at work (and in the ‘family’). This includes the phantasy of seduction of fathers by daughters, mother/daughter relationships, sibling relationships and the sense of exclusion or ‘otherness’ (Gerrard, 2010). Borrowing from Loewald (2000), words such as ‘destruction’, ‘demolition’ and ‘parricide’7 and consequent associations of ‘betrayal’, ‘seduction’ and ‘violation’ of bonds that link parents and children need to be explored more directly in organisational consulting. Linked closely to the ‘blind eye’ turned to abuse within the organisation/family is the way in which the system fails to manage its boundaries particularly of time, place and power/authority relationships (Schwartz, 1994, 2010). Each example described above indicated some degree of failure in psychic resolution of the Oedipus complex and every scenario might have been described, and unconsciously experienced, as an enactment of dysfunctional family dynamics. The first scenario, involving the group planning the event, suggested how dysfunctional social defences against anxieties, panic about losing emotional ties, about failure to complete the set task and thus annihilation of the leader/manager, led to the unconscious ‘destruction’ of a group member. Aside from the distress caused to him, and some of the witnesses, the team lost the opportunity to include his specific expertise. In the case of Cherry and Daniel, the ‘family’ scenario – father, daughter, mother, step-mother – was omnipresent and Cherry found the possibility that she might not be ‘different’ from her siblings, who might Psychodynamic Practice 437 replace her if they were ‘identical’, unbearable. She also perhaps needed to repress thoughts of others’ relationships with Daniel unless (like Sally) they were people she herself was also close to. If ‘unknown’ or ‘outside’ others were apparently close to Daniel, Cherry might attempt denigration and annihilation in order to save her sense of specialness. This would be likely to be destructive to her professional practice, as it would represent a failure to learn from her own and others’ experiences, with the desire to compete being too intense to allow for thinking. Conclusions In both case studies, the key players and the ‘bystanders’ apparently had little room to think and learn, it seemed, because of the defences against the anxiety produced by rivalry, envy and competition in the context of ‘secret couplings’. While it would probably not have been helpful for a consultant to provide this interpretation to the clients, Oedipal phantasies and defences against related anxieties may prevent conduct of the primary task. When even within clinical circles the importance of the Oedipus complex is disputed (O’Shaughnessy, 2007), it is easy to see why organisational consultants might dismiss or overlook the most significant ‘analytic tool’ or lens for working in a psychoanalytic and systemic way, particularly when considering leadership and gender relations in organisations. However, the triangular situation and the possibilities for being ‘left out’ or ‘not having a place’ in the family, team or organisation is crucial to understanding the power struggles (filled with competition, hatred, envy and narcissism) which lie at the heart of both organisational dynamics and family dynamics. Equally important, particularly for understanding the role of gender in such struggles, is the inherent bisexuality, through which, girls/ boys/women/men have the potential to relate to each other in a number of ways including through both love and hate. A psychoanalytic perspective allows us to consider the ways in which adults unconsciously re-play their experience of the primal scene and the compelling influence of this on their relationships at work. Such thinking thus offers a means of enabling both individual and systemic change. Holding in mind the power of the primal scene in organisational as well as family life may enable the consultant to make sense of some emotional conscious and unconscious processes and identify to clients, in a less sexually evocative manner, some ways in which patterns from family life are likely to repeat themselves at work. Explicit discussion of work-place rivalries, feelings of being left out when a colleague gets promoted or seems more favoured, the influence of a leader on motivation, communication and relationships with close colleagues, are all relevant and may all be presented best through a ‘down-to-earth’ comparison with family life. These present the client(s) with 438 P. Nicolson the potential to think about the less overt qualities in their families of origin and learn about deeper aspects of their relationships at work. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Judy Dunn’s work provides empirical evidence confirming the importance of sibling relationships for the infant and young child albeit without the analysis of the unconscious. Every name and some details have been changed in each case study to preserve confidentiality. All members were equal participants working alongside each other in this exercise, with consultants appointed from outside the clinical psychology group. I was one of the trainees in this event. Part of the planning process had involved the emergence of a small group of managers including a deputy director of the event. This group for the most part had also emerged via ‘secret’ e-mail exchanges. She suggests that this is the reason that psychoanalysis has tended to focus on the vertical because that is a perspective taken on the whole by men. 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